Creating tools and resources to meet Mental Health Literacy needs for HNC
Status: Commenced June 2022 — Current
Client: Healthy North Coast (North Coast PHN)
Background:
The purpose of the project is to work alongside Healthy North Coast and a Lived Experience Panel to identify barriers and enablers to help-seeking, which will lead to the development of locally relevant tools and resources that meet identified mental health literacy needs, helping people to act early and promoting available supports.
Beacon Strategies has been given the opportunity to work in partnership with Healthy North Coast to help co-design tools and resources for the North Coast Mental Health Literacy Project.
The Health Literacy Initiative is a program delivered through the NSW Mental Health Commission aiming to improve outcomes for people with experience of mental health issues, as well as their carers and kinships groups.
Beacon Strategies will work alongside Healthy North Coast, people with a lived experience of mental health concerns and frontline staff, to create organisational health literacy tools and resources that would improve access to support early, improve understanding of available care options, and allow people to choose the most appropriate option of care to improve their health. The co-design process will focus on two key areas:
Programs to help people act early when they feel ‘something is not quite right.’
Good and easily available information on community supports (formal and informal).
Approach:
Our approach to delivering the North Coast Mental Health Literacy Project is designed to achieve the objectives listed below.
Objective 1
Undertake a tightly scoped desktop review to understand and summarise the strategic environment and local need and priorities related to mental health literacy. The review will involve a scan of existing mental health literacy initiatives to understand what is being done to address mental health literacy needs in other areas.
Objective 2
Engage with the Lived Experience Panel and other key identified stakeholders through an Experience Based Co-design process to understand people’s experiences of seeking help for a mental health concern, identify underlying needs to be addressed by the mental health literacy initiative, and collaboratively develop solutions (potential products) that respond to the identified needs.
Objective 3
Informed by the co-design process, develop a design brief and draft content planning for the ‘products’ that will be progressed, and support Healthy North Coast to identify considerations for ongoing implementation and evaluation of the Mental Health Literacy Initiative.
As a mission-based health and social services consultancy, Beacon Strategies is committed to partnering with PHNs to better plan, design, implement, evaluate and communicate their work in delivering health outcomes for local communities. Head to https://beaconstrategies.net/primary-health-networks to read more about our work with PHNs.
